The recommendations actually hurts minor parties. The leftover preference flows from major parties are enormous and enough to get minor parties enough votes to get the quota. So, even if people don't get their sincere preference, at least a Labor voter is happy that it's still going to the most preferred party more closely aligned with Labor.

The major parties are playing on the hopes that:

1) Voters are discouraged from voting as many parties as possible. Look at how many people prefer 1 tick instead of below the line.

2) Voters assume the amount of parties they picked are good enough.

3) Some voters like me actually like ticking once yet they are killing group tickets. This is because some parties have really good preference group tickets: http://pirateparty.org.au/wiki/Preferences Killing group tickets make absolutely no sense. Why can't I tick it instead of numbering it? This is crushing democracy.

The major parties are nasty but cunning planners by increasing effort for people to vote for the same choices. This is a clear rigging of the system.

No, the problem is that political parties are incompetent on their sincere preferences on group ticket. There are some good political parties who have sincere preferences or those who let party members decide: http://pirateparty.org.au/wiki/Preferences

In fact, the group tickets are public. Remember the controversy with Wikileaks favouring a lot of questionable parties?

The preference system works based on what people most want and works its way down to what people least want. If your party favoured a bad party highly that they didn't want, then it's a result of incompetence.

Why are they 'backroom preference deals'? It's all public. It was even widely known that Wikileaks party favoured a lot of questionable political parties. This made them lose a lot of favour with voters before the polls.

You know what's funny, most of the non-major parties have policies to reform House of Representatives to be more proportional and fair.

The major parties have no policies relating to electoral matters yet every couple years, they rig the system more in their favour. They even doubled the cost to register as a house of representative even though the ballot barely has 6 choices in most electorates.

They already doubled the requirements to become a political party last year. Conroy pushed it by saying there's too many choices on the ballot. Now with the publicity of one minor party member getting elected that Australia most likely disagrees with, they are able to pass huge swaths of undemocratic reforms.

It's needed. We're going to see so many superannuations with millions and soon, billions, and they are not going to be taxed when it goes to children who didn't earn it. It's a massive bonus that will reinforce social wealth inequity. Especially with a tax on everyone else who do not have rich daddies like Mr Keating.

I find it rich that he's proposing taxes to make everyone pay for it while he happily gets to pass on his super to his children after he dies. With no tax on the super inheritance.

Preference farming makes no sense. 1 vote is still 1 vote. I've looked at the ticket groups and placed my vote above the line because I'm satisfied with it. Voters still have the choice to vote below the line. Major parties dislike group tickets because the leftover votes would actually count against them.

The bigger issue is the millions of voters that have no representative in the HoR. In fact, Labor and Liberals got 28% more seats compared to the primary vote they got. A massive 28% or 27 seats(!) while the media is focused on one new party getting a seat.

Media is actually ignoring them. Look at Labor's press releases. I never heard of most of them in the media. It's like the Greens too, they release more PR than Labor and yet are rarely reported. Even one retiring Greens media relations person condemned the Canberra Press Gallery for refusing to report Greens statements for fear of offending their bosses.